Gratitude
by Steals Thyme
Summary: He was never one to leave Dan hanging. Dan/Rorschach, Post-Roche. Complete.
1. Gratitude

_Stupid to get split up like that_, Rorschach thought, his breath condensing on the inside of his mask. _A rookie mistake. _ He'd let a trio of thugs distract him while Nite Owl had foolishly taken off after another pair. His feet pounded paving and asphalt in a dead sprint, the impacts jarring his knees and shins. Moisture dripped off his chin, sweat and saliva dampening the scarf at his throat as he whipped through the labyrinthine alleyways.

_Stupid, stupid. Where are you?_ Left here, and left again, past dilapidated doorways and through inky puddles that reflected neon. He knew these shifting streets as well as he knew his own face; he mentally mapped them out, extrapolating his location. Straight on here, past the abandoned tenements, then right. They can't have gone much further than this ...

_God, Daniel._

They hadn't gone any further than this. Rorschach skidded to an abrupt halt, worn soles seeking purchase on the uneven paving. He choked back a gasp. No, a breath – he was just out of breath – and took tentative steps towards his partner, carried on legs that suddenly felt like water.

Daniel had put up a fight, but the discarded weaponry and fans of freshly-broken glass spoke of more than the two scumbags he had initially intercepted. Outnumbered and without backup, they had done this to him. Rorschach clenched trembling fists, cold fury torquing his mouth into a rictus snarl under the mask.

_Stupid._

Daniel hung, suspended from a fire escape by his cape. It was a grotesque parody of flight, not at all like that of the birds he idolized. His goggles lay crushed on the ground a meter below his limp form; blood slowly dripped, _pat pat pat_, and pooled on the shattered lenses. Rorschach's gut clenched as he realized that they had used Daniel as a punching bag.

Rorschach stripped a glove from his hand, and gently curled his fingers around Daniel's wrist. He exhaled against a dizzying wave of relief as he detected a stuttering pulse. _Get him down, get him safe_.

Dawn was close; the sky graying out to the color of a detuned television set. No time to make it back to the brownstone, but his apartment was close. Dangerous, uncomfortable- but a necessary compromise. Rorschach worked swiftly at the cape, tearing it at the seams, carefully lowering his partner to slump in a dead weight over one shoulder.

[#]

Rorschach set Daniel down onto his cot, untangling the man's heavy limbs from his person. The fell denizens of his tenement building were waking, already a dawn chorus of slamming and screaming resonated through the thin walls. Rorschach paid them no heed, relegated them to insignificant peripheral noise. He was more interested in listening to his partner.

His breathing was shallow, expected considering the circumstances. Steady, though, and not wet. No punctured lung. Good. Rainbow of bruises visible through shredded spandex; cracked ribs at the least.

Lots of blood. Not all his, Rorschach noted with some satisfaction.

Two fingers broken on his left hand, one on his right. Left ankle swelling up. Several deep gashes on his arms; defensive wounds. Rorschach continued his detached assessment, a clinical litany to quell his anger.

His face, bruised and lacerated and ingrained with gravel.

A wrathful eruption melted his dispassion, roiling in his belly. Clenched fists. _There will be vengeance tonight._

Rorschach grabbed at his clothes; fedora and trench and pinstripe jacket flung aside. Ungloved hands hesitated over his mask, fingertips ghosting over the inkblots that shifted there. He rolled it up over his nose instead. Grabbing a washcloth and bowl of warm water, and his small cache of medical supplies, Rorschach knelt at his partner's side.

Time became transient as he fixed Daniel, shadows traveling across the floor in Fibonacci squares. He carefully cut away gray fabric that stuck to pale skin, bathed wounds with a bloody cloth. Splinted fingers, gently wrapped with gauze. Only two stitches in his chin, reverential in their neatness; it wouldn't scar. Many more sutures in his forearms. Those might.

Daniel almost surfaced as Rorschach tended to his battered ribs, briefly roused by the pain. His eyes jittered behind closed lids and a low utterance escaped split lips. _Rorschach_.

Rorschach smoothed Daniel's hair back from his forehead and paused, surprised at his own gesture. Borne of guilt, or shame?

Tired. Just tired.

Hauling his only chair over to the bedside, Rorschach napped, shoulders hunched and hands tucked firmly under his arms.

[#]

The night passed in a frenzied blur of fists and bones, retribution meted unflinchingly. Vengeance had form and he was etched in black and white, and he would make this city scream.

[#]

When he returned to his apartment, Daniel was sitting on the cot, running his fingers over the tidy row of stitches in his arm. The rising sun traced golden contours around his shoulders and ignited filaments of his hair. He looked up, and the depth of gratitude on his face was horrifying.


	2. Seams

_They slide from the shadows, all leather and grease and hefted weaponry. Keen edges glint under yellow and green neon and are thrust towards him like poisoned daggers. He deflects them with ease at first, but he's running on adrenaline and increasingly sharp slivers of panic; the night has reeled out immeasurably and he is already tiring. A knife scrapes along the thick leather of his gloves, scores his forearm with sickly wet warmth. He takes out one thug with a fist to the throat and snaps the arm of another, but there are still so many and he is only one man._

_A kidney punch makes him stagger, and he is ambushed by grabbing hands that yank at his cloak and pull his cowl from his head, goggles dragging painfully over his face. They mock and ridicule and howl as they lynch him with his own costume, imbecilic taunts punctuated with hickory to his ribs and steel to his flesh, again and again …_

Dan was woken by own choked breathing, his limbs tensed and screaming in protest. It took several moments for the agonized palpitations of his heart to subside and nauseating colors to stop flashing across his vision. His head pounded like a glorious hangover.

This was not his bedroom, he realized, swollen eyes struggling to focus on the cracks that spidered over the ceiling, indistinct and shifting in the grayness of early morning light. Nebulous recollections nudged at him, of quiet hands and a stinging needle. He flexed his hands experimentally, feeling the resistant tug of sutures in the skin of his arm. _Rorschach._

Jarring dissonance as Dan's brain caught up. This must be Rorschach's home.

He considered for a moment. _No. Not home, just where he lives_. Regardless, a frisson of excitement temporarily diluted his pain; Rorschach had always been a cipher, bluntly deflecting Dan's attempts to know him and shrugging off his small talk with abstruse noises. Finding himself in a room full of Rorschach's possessions was like a cryptographer's dream.

_Or maybe not_, Dan thought wryly, as he spied a familiar mug perched atop a stack of papers. A cartoon owl motif stared back at him.

Girding himself against an inevitable riot of pain, Dan hauled himself upright and swung his feet onto the floor. He groaned to himself as his body protested; every square inch ached bone-deep. He could barely tell which parts of him were genuinely wounded. He was getting too old for this.

The room was becoming lighter by increments, the grimness of the surroundings gradually revealed as the shadows dispersed. Speckles of black mold on the faded, peeling wallpaper and salty residue left by rising damp. That went some way to explaining the smell, at least. The floor was gritty under his feet, mostly bare boards but some sparse covering of carpet; he could see two or three different patterns Frankensteined together. Rumpled clothes were heaped into one corner, the pile crowned with several dog-eared paperbacks and a half-empty soda bottle.

Dan twitched.

He was interrupted from working out the logistics of doing laundry by the squeak and clatter of the window being opened. Rorschach levered himself through, gloves leaving bloody smears on the cracked pane. He glanced at Dan as he paced across the room, taking off his fedora and turning it over in his hands a few times before placing it on his dresser.

"Good that you're awake," he said finally.

Dan offered a reassuring smile, feeling the pull of damaged skin on his lips. "Yeah," he replied, voice hoarse and cracking. "I owe you–"

"No," Rorschach interrupted him vehemently. "No debt, Daniel." He picked his hat back up, jammed it on his head. Hands in pockets, then out again, fists clenched then unclenched. His discomfiture was tangible, exacerbated by whatever violence he had wrought while out on patrol.

Dan raised his hands in a placating gesture. His smile became more like a grimace, awkwardly aware that he was the main cause of Rorschach's aggravation. The silence strung out between them, a quivering thread of tension that Dan didn't quite know how to break.

Rorschach snapped it for him, pacing back to the window and hopping up onto the sill. He jabbed a finger in Dan's direction. "Have things to do. Stay here, rest. Don't answer door." He paused, hanging halfway out of the window. "And don't touch anything."

[#]

Dan drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, before the repeated strains of (_Don't Fear) The Reaper_ from the apartment next door began to drive him crazy. It was like some kind of sadistic time loop; he had no idea if he even slept at all, always roused by the same song. Somewhere below, a heated argument had turned into noisy sex. He gave up all pretense of napping, and grabbed a couple of the papers from the stack next to the bed.

The _New Frontiersman_, Dan snorted. That didn't surprise him in the slightest. Nor did the cryptic notes scrawled in the margins in a crabbed, childlike hand. He leafed through a few pages of right-wing frothing before trying to read without his glasses brought on a headache. He returned the papers to their pile, careful to put them back in the same order he found them.

There was a dearth of personal effects in Rorschach's room, Dan found with something like disappointment. The stubble clinging to the greasy tideline in the washbasin was ginger, but that wasn't something he didn't already know. The straight razor was more interesting. It was a curious, pleasing anachronism; it suited Rorschach in a way Dan couldn't describe.

A couple of filthy dishes sat on the scored wooden table. Swiped from his kitchen, Dan noted with a roll of his eyes. The top half of his Nite Owl costume was draped over the back of the chair; Dan lifted it, shook it out. He winced, fingering the lacerated fabric.

"Will fix that for you." Gravelly tones from the window.

Dan dropped his mauled costume with a start. "Christ, Rorschach, you nearly– is there something wrong with your front door?"

"Walk in and out of apartment with face on?" Rorschach tilted his head. "Thought you might have suffered concussion. Now certain."

Dan laughed sheepishly, moving in a zombie-esque shuffle to sit on the bare mattress. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't be surprised. I had something of a rough night."

"Not last night, " Rorschach said flatly, hauling a scuffed leather holdall onto the table. "Night before. Last night was rough for scum."

"Oh, Jesus." Dan muttered. That uneasy silence again, like he was supposed to say something. Or Rorschach was trying to. Instead, he asked, "Is- is that my bag?"

Rorschach made an affirmative noise. "Reconnoitered Owl's Nest. All quiet, seems unmasking did not compromise identity. Picked up supplies."

'Supplies' proved to be the contents of Dan's kitchen cupboards, and some scraps of fabric and sewing paraphernalia that Rorschach had found God knows where. He accepted the plate of tuna that Rorschach proffered, the flakes of fish still in a neat cylinder from the tin. Dan ate it with his fingers, since forks were obviously an alien concept.

Rorschach had shrugged out of his trench and suit jacket while Dan ate, and laid the Owlsuit out on the table. Mask creased up over his nose, he held a fan of pins in his mouth, delicately nestled between pursed lips. Dan watched in fascination as deft fingers pulled rent cloth together, skillfully patching up the worst damage with new fabric.

"You're a– a tailor?" Dan asked, failing to keep a note of incredulity from his voice.

Rorschach snorted, spitting the pins onto the table; a gesture that inexplicably left Dan's mouth dry. "No."

He pulled out a skein of cotton, snapping it between his teeth and nimbly threading a needle. "Unskilled worker," he continued. "Quit some time ago."

Dan just boggled at him, unable to reconcile this facet of Rorschach with the finger-breaking and vitriolic ranting. Rorschach stared back, inkblots shifting lazily into abstract expressions.

Dan's fingers went to his chin, tracing the bump of sutures. He spoke quietly, "You did a good job. Thank you."

"Shouldn't have had to, Daniel." Rorschach jabbed with the needle, his mouth a stiff line. "Should have had your back."

They passed the rest of the day in delicate silence.

[#]

Dan lost track of days quickly, thrown off by an irregular sleep pattern and Rorschach's erratic comings and goings. He estimated it had taken almost a week before he could move fluidly, without having to clench his teeth and make pathetic little noises.

Donning his repaired costume, he followed Rorschach out of the window. He was in no way fit for patrol yet, but he had to get out of Rorschach's hair. Besides, he was bored stupid and sick of subsisting on tuna and cold beans. He missed his own bed, missed having clean sheets, missed not finding sugar cubes under the pillow and unidentifiable stains on the mattress. A shower would be nice, too.

His feet had barely touched the ground before Rorschach was on him, hands fisted into the front of his costume. Dan's back slammed against the wall, reawakening complaints from his injuries.

"Don't come back here." Rorschach growled, his face inches from Dan's. "Don't."

Dan could only nod.

Gloved fingertips flitted over Dan's face, tracing the faint scar on his chin.


	3. Touch

Something in the gutter caught Dan Dreiberg's eye; a familiar curve of lacquered gunmetal, fragments of reflective glass. He nudged the object with the toe of his boot and then bent to pick it up, holding it primly between finger and thumb. The rain had long since sluiced his blood from the pavement, but some things remained; tangible evidence like ruined equipment, and more ephemeral abstractions that claw hungrily at the edges of his sleep.

Above his head, the wind lifted tatters of fabric, further entangling it in the metal struts of a fire escape.

He should be back out on the streets by now. Almost a month on, his injuries were no longer a hindrance, no longer an _excuse_, and God knew he was restless. Why else this daytime reconnaissance, walking through filthy alleyways in civilian guise? It was hardly the adrenaline-sharpened dance of their nocturnal crimefighting, but a dangerous game nonetheless.

Dan tucked the broken goggles into the inside pocket of his overcoat and continued to walk, patrolling a circuit around the neighborhood; a holding pattern that unconsciously wound closer to, but never quite reached, a particular tenement block.

[#]

It took days for his bed to stop smelling like Daniel. Rorschach had no spare sheets, so he aired them, hanging them outside his window to flutter lazily against the brickwork. Even after that, he still found an occasional strand of dark hair coiled into a fold of bedding; something that made him inexplicably angry, made him physically shake.

He slept on the floor, hard boards numbing him to the bone and ensuring his rest was not interrupted by soft, intrusive dreams.

[#]

Rorschach woke at dusk, the city clamoring below him. He stalked his usual route for an hour or so, but he'd been too long solo, and eventually his traitorous feet brought him to the Owl's Nest. Daniel was poring intently over a set of blueprints under an anglepoise, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth as he concentrated.

He looked up as Rorschach cleared his throat, apprehension flitting across his face before breaking into a genuine smile.

"Daniel," Rorschach offered by way of greeting, fists thrust to the bottom of his trench coat pockets. He wandered over to bump elbows with his partner, inspecting the scrolls of schemata. The papers were weighted at each corner with oily machine parts and an empty coffee mug. "Hrm. Keeping busy, I see."

Daniel polished his lenses on the hem of his sweater vest. Placing the glasses back on his nose, he spared a puzzled glance at where their arms touched, lines briefly creasing his brow. "Yeah, I decided my costume could do with an upgrade. Gave me something to do while I was laid up." His grinned widely. "Hey, let me show you."

Rorschach nodded. Daniel's boyish enthusiasm for gadgetry was often irritating, but he was curious to see what kind of improvements had been made to the Owlsuit. He always thought the outfit decidedly impractical, even street clothes would offer more protection from a flashing blade than the gray spandex. Not to mention, it looked ridiculous.

_Verging on indecent; clinging fabric shifts over toned muscle, emphasizes every cord and sinew. It feels decadent under his rough fingers as he eases it away from lacerated skin_ …

Rorschach bit down on the inside of his cheek, hard enough to taste blood.

"I just finished with the new goggles. Had a bit of trouble configuring the head-up display, I had to go dig my old pair out of a gutter downtown to see if I could salvage the chipset." Daniel's voice was muffled as he pulled the sweater over his head. "It's been so long since I first made them, I'd forgotten about the, the– ah, never mind, that's pretty dull stuff."

Unbuttoning his shirt, Daniel gestured with his head to where the old suit hung, ensconced among memorabilia and unfinished projects. "It's a bit more complex– actually, it's a _lot_ more complex than that old thing." He grinned. "Might take me a while to get into it."

Rorschach turned his back as Daniel divested himself of his outer layers, pretending to run a cursory inspection of Archie's hull. Daniel's reflection staccatoed over the dull surface as he suited up, amorphous shapes distorted by the ship's dented exterior. Rorschach's hands were hot, sweating in the depths of his pockets. He drew them out slowly and placed them on the metal, feeling the cool of the steel seep through the leather; palms laid flat over dancing reflections.

_Bare skin laid on rumpled sheets,_his _sheets on_ his _bed. Not fair how much that bothers him, how invasive it seems and he stomps down on that tendril of resentment before it gets a choke hold. It's Daniel, just Daniel and he needs his help, and it's not his fault and Rorschach doesn't want to touch that bare skin but has to, and he's so warm, feverish almost ..._

"Hey, Rorschach? Could you give me a hand?"

Rorschach jerked his hands away from Archie, dark pools spread across his cheeks, feathered edges like a bird taking flight. Daniel was grappling with a rigid bronze garment that resembled a sleeved ballistic vest. "It fastens on my hip there, it's a little stiff. It'll get worn in with use though, and practice. Just snap it closed like– yeah, like that, thanks."

If Rorschach's fingers lingered on his partner's side a moment longer than strictly necessary, Daniel seemed to pay it no heed.

Daniel pulled the cowl over his head. It covered half of his face even without the goggles; hid the pale seam on his chin. He struck an exaggeratedly heroic pose, fists on hips, chest puffed out. "So, what do you think?"

It was impressive, Rorschach had to admit. More intimidating than the previous incarnation, more sophisticated in design. Sleek. "This is good, Daniel. Offers more protection than old suit."

Daniel beamed. "Absolutely. It's a polycarbonate-Kevlar blend scale mail. Heavier than spandex but worth the trade off, I think. It could turn a knife and I'd not even notice."

_A minor wound compared to what the rest of his body has endured, but it incenses him the most, that sliver of red marring his chin. He thumbs it gently as if to wipe it away, willing the skin to knit itself, to leave no reminder ... _

Gloved fingers reached out to trail over the burnished, feather-like plates, an intimation that made Dan raise his eyebrows, unseen beneath his cowl. "So, uh," he cleared his throat. "Patrol? Let's try this baby out."

Rorschach nodded, returning his hands to their pockets.

[#]

Dan was giggling hysterically by the time they returned to the Nest, his laughter hiccuping out between panting breaths. "Oh Jesus, get it off, get it off get it off ..."

He pulled at the cowl and the latches on his armor, stripping down to his underwear. Rivulets of sweat tracked over his body, heavy droplets spattering on concrete. "Oh thank God," Dan gasped. "Going to have to figure out a way to ventilate more adequately ..."

He shook his head vigorously, spraying perspiration in an arc and plastering his hair to his forehead. Rorschach made an indistinct noise, pointedly wiping the front of his trench. Dan raised his hands apologetically, "Sorry."

Without warning, Rorschach lunged forward to grasp Dan's wrists, turning his hands palm-down to inspect the healed wounds on his forearms. Dan recoiled, jerking backwards with enough force to unbalance himself. He staggered against the wall, harsh scrape of brick on his naked back.

"What are you– Christ, what the hell is up with you, Rorschach?" Dan blinked agitatedly. His partner was an indistinct blur, haloed by the dim lighting of his workshop.

"Don't know what you mean." Even without his glasses, Dan could see Rorschach tense up, quivering like a struck tuning fork. Enough, he'd had enough; all night they had been literally side by side, Rorschach constantly shooting him oblique glances. Most unsettling were the surreptitious touches, a brief brush of fingers to his back or shoulder, too frequent to be accidental.

"You barely left my side all night. I mean, we might as well have been handcuffed together. And what's with all the tou–"

"I had your back," Rorschach interrupted fiercely, "All night. New suit, unfamiliar, puts you at risk. It's what partners are for, Daniel."

_"Shouldn't have had to, Daniel." Rorschach jabs with the needle, his mouth a stiff line. "Should have had your back."_

Dan let out a shaky sigh, those inchoate seeds of suspicion suddenly blossoming into an ugly, tangled truth. Thorny realization, clear in hindsight; Rorschach repairing his old costume, spitting out cagey retorts, rebuffing all attempts at thanks. A thumb to his chin, so fleeting he might have imagined it.

A terse silence. Dan broke out in goosebumps as the sweat evaporated from his skin.

"It wasn't your fault." he said finally, pushing himself away from the wall. The words came all at once, laced with consternation. "I got stupid, thought I could handle it. Didn't back off when I had the chance, when I realized things were getting out of control. That's not your fault, Rorschach."

Rorschach ducked his head, as though to hide his face under the brim of his fedora. His voice was taut, forced out from between clenched teeth. "Blind luck, Daniel. Pure chance they left you alive. Could have killed you, probably meant to. Though you were dead at first, didn't know ... should have been there. Not a game, stakes too high to gamble like that ..."

Hands reached out again, grasped Dan's shoulders firmly. He could feel tremors quaking through Rorschach's body; it was deeply alarming, the man usually held his emotions on such a tight leash.

It took the impact of the brick wall at his back before it occurred to Dan that Rorschach was likely the sort to channel any emotion into anger. Leather-clad fingers dug into his shoulders and left livid white marks on his flushed skin.

"Hey, hey ...!" Dan grabbed at Rorschach's elbows, intending to lever him away, somehow pulling him to his chest instead, fedora tipped askew then knocked to the floor in the process. Dan instinctively tightened his arms around Rorschach and twisted his hands into the back of his trench, restraining more than embracing. "Hey. It's okay. It's okay."

Distantly, Dan wondered why he hadn't been floored already.

Rorschach became quiescent for an impossible moment, hands relaxing on Dan's shoulders, head tucked under his chin. It was strangely intimate, Rorschach's ragged breathing warming his throat, even through the mask. Dan made a conscious effort to still his hands, to refrain from stroking the man's back. He could only imagine Rorschach's response to being comforted like a child.

"Okay?" Dan murmured.

Rorschach grunted, inelegantly extricating himself and smoothing down the front of his trench coat.

"Rorschach." Dan pressed, bending to pick up his fedora.

"Fine, Daniel." He took his hat, jammed it on his head, inkblots dancing maniacally through a range of pseudo-expressions. "Okay."

Dan nodded, understanding that it was as much as he'd get. "I, uh– I need to take a shower. Do you want a cup of coffee, or ...?"

"Coffee would be good."

Dan exhaled, letting his head fall back against the brick. Rorschach spared him an unreadable look, then made his way to the kitchen; the set of his shoulders as rigid as ever, but his hands free of his pockets.


	4. Drown

Pipes clanked in the walls of the brownstone, the sonorous rumble of the boiler disrupting the stillness of the kitchen. Weak morning light diffused into the room, playing across the withered leaves of a neglected houseplant and along the rim of a saucepan, upended on the draining rack. Motes of dust hung suspended, flakes of gold.

Rorschach nursed a mug of viscous black coffee, fingertips warming against the ceramic. If Daniel were to walk into his kitchen right now, he'd find a stranger sitting at his table; rawboned and haggard, an inkblot face next to his left hand, folded carefully. For the first time he could remember, Rorschach had felt claustrophobic under the fabric, the roiling stormclouds fraying his temper and making it difficult to gather his unraveled thoughts.

He breathed deeply, noisily exhaling through narrowed lips, trying to settle the lurching in his stomach. Things weren't so clear anymore. The past few weeks had shaken him more than he'd willingly admit, ragged emotions prickling at him from the back of his head and deep in his gut; foreign and uncomfortable and with barbed edges that hooked themselves into every thought. He nudged at their periphery in a fit of masochism and felt his insides drop away, like they do when Archimedes hits a pocket of turbulence. As if he were in free-fall.

Framed pictures on Daniel's wall, owls of course. His skin was gray in the reflection of the glass, stark shadows beneath his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks.

He felt sick.

Upstairs, the muted patter of water ceased abruptly, pipes shrieking their last before falling silent. Rorschach snagged his face, sliding it to the edge of the table. He made a V, stretching the fabric between two fingers and watching the black spread over white, white over black, neither diluting the other. It should be that simple. Had been, for a long time. Disturbing how suddenly the status quo had shifted.

Footfalls, creaking stairs. For a fleeting moment – a moment that made his heart thud heavily and raised the hair on the back of his neck – he considered laying himself bare. He could abandon his true face, just this once, and let Daniel see his fault lines. Let him pry at them, deepen them even as he would try to fix them. He could bleed out over his hands.

He pulled the latex over his head roughly, self-disgust burning like bile in the back of his throat.

[#]

Eyes closed, Dan tilted his head up under the shower head, sluicing away the sweat and grime of the night's patrol. The water beat out a tattoo over his shoulders and back, pressure easing his aching muscles.

With restless inevitability, his mind turned to his partner. The thread of something that was pulled taut between them was knotted with all kinds of signals that Dan didn't have the first clue how to interpret, and it was getting to him. God, he'd actually _snapped_ at the man.

So Rorschach was guilty that Dan had taken a beating. Okay. He'd figured that out, eventually. He could understand that, he'd felt it himself whenever he'd had to stitch up the worst of Rorschach's wounds.

The sudden physical neediness though, that's just ...

Dan sighed, lathering the soap. His hands glided over his stomach and hips, and with an unheralded stab of lust that darkened the edges of his vision, he imagined it was Rorschach's hands on him, filthy leather tracking dirt through the suds; a visceral, tactile fantasy. Rough, hungry mouth at his neck, teeth and latex scraping his skin, hot breath on his throat.

_Oh. _

_Oh god, that's just fucked up._

_But you're still thinking about it, aren't you?_

He upped the shower temperature to a notch below unbearable, skin scalded pink under the steaming water.

[#]

Dan padded into the kitchen, clad in sweatpants and a shapeless t-shirt, toweling his damp hair. His bare feet left rapidly evaporating halos of moisture on the tile. Rorschach was still there, trench thrown over the back of a chair, mask bunched across his nose, palms laid flat to the tabletop. Dan leaned against the sink unit and cast around, trying to think of something to say that wouldn't immediately betray him.

He decided on something excruciatingly mundane. "How's the coffee?"

"Hrnh," Rorschach looked down at the mug as if he'd only just noticed it, picked it up and swirled the liquid. "Cold."

"Want a fresh cup?"

Fingernails on chalkboard as Rorschach pushed the chair back, "No thanks. Should be going. Could do with some sleep." He elbowed Dan aside to empty the mug into the sink, watching the dark liquid drain into the plughole, residue of coffee grounds pooling on the stainless steel.

"Stay," Dan said, not sure if it was a request or a demand. "I can take the couch."

The blots on his partner's face shifted in mercurial patterns, and Dan found he didn't have to read anything into them. Rorschach's mouth was pressed into a quivering line, face twitching.

"Don't look at me that way," something in Rorschach's voice cracked, jagged syllables spilling forth and shattering. "Daniel."

A crystalline beat.

He had expected a struggle, a violent recoil and likely blood. The gloved hands fisted painfully in his hair seemed right, though not the sour breath ghosting across his lips – but then he was being kissed, Rorschach was kissing _him_; a tentative, almost chaste caress that broke Dan's heart as he realized the man had only the vaguest idea of what to do.

He found the lapels of Rorschach's jacket, gently tugged him closer, spreading warmth as he parted his lips and tasted stale, over-sweet coffee. Rorschach choked against Dan's mouth, shaking hands untangled and coming to rest on his shoulders, clinging desperately. He tried to pull away, keen edge of panic in his movements.

Dan simply held him, pressed cheek to cheek as Rorschach gasped like a drowning man who was surfacing for the last time.

-----

A/N I want to call this finished, for now. If I do decide to continue, needless to say it'll be completely gratuitous porn, and therefore not likely to be posted here ;)


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